


what you are asking fits with everything on my list

by irnan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Crack, Fluff and Angst, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 04:18:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1730852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky's been trying to set Steve up since 1935. Natasha's been trying to set him up since 2012. What's more logical than that they should join forces? </p>
<p>Bucky would like Sam Wilson to know that that is not actually a dirty joke about him and Nat, thank you and fuck off. (Even though it kinda is.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	what you are asking fits with everything on my list

**Author's Note:**

> Crack, crack, craaaaaaaaaack. I've written a romcom for my OT3. Title from Van Morrison.
> 
> Warnings for attempted sexual assault.

 

Steve had never exactly enjoyed parties. As a kid he had used to think he didn’t really like going out full stop, but over time he had developed an appreciation for afternoons in coffee shops or evenings in pubs that turned into nights, a table full of people whose company he enjoyed and a limitless supply of food or drink. Luckily for him, most of his friends felt the same way, and New York (Brooklyn and Harlem in particular) was littered with favourite pubs, bars and coffee shops.

But about three months ago, Bucky and Natasha had… had an attitude change. Well, maybe that wasn’t quite true; Bucky had always enjoyed a good party, and he liked to dance. Steve hadn’t known that Natasha liked it as well, but the things he still didn’t know about Natasha could fill a book the size of his family Bible, and maybe the simple truth was that she enjoyed it because she enjoyed spending time with Bucky. The party invitations had, after all, started after they had got together.

(Oh, God, that had been the worst possible conversation to almost walk in on. They had been in the living room of the apartment that Steve and Bucky shared and that Natasha had appropriated; Steve had just come back from a run and had frozen up in the hallway when he’d realised Natasha was standing in the living room in her _underwear_.

“Look, for all that you were born in 1917, you seem to be having real trouble with the idea that time changes things,” she’d said. “This is one of those things.”

“I can see that,” Bucky had said in a strangled voice.

“I’m not seventeen anymore,” said Natasha, “and neither of us are brainwashed, and you’re not my mentor. I can draw you a diagram if you’d like, but I’d really rather you just got over here –“

That had been the point when Steve had fled, face flaming.)

Anyway, the parties. Fancier bars than they usually frequented, clubs, sometimes one of Tony and Pepper’s charity galas, where Steve crawled into his Army dress uniform and shook hands and smiled a lot – actually, he usually enjoyed the charity galas, he had met a lot of interesting people that way and done more than one week of volunteering for the charity in question afterwards.

But he had a feeling that Natasha and Bucky were of the opinion he was doing the charity galas wrong if that was what he took away from them.

Look, Steve wasn’t and never had been stupid. Bucky and Natasha were more subtle than they had used to be, in the Forties or before SHIELD had gone down, but they were still doing the same thing: they were trying to set him up.

“They want you to be happy,” Sam said.

“I am happy,” said Steve.

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m not – I don’t see the point in meeting someone just for the sake of it. Like, I’m not _lonely_ , Sam.”

“Anymore,” said Sam.

“Shut up,” said Steve. “And even then, you know, a girlfriend would not have fixed that just, you know, with the magic of sex.”

“No, of course not,” said Sam. “But, you know.” He paused, gestured with his beer bottle. “… Sex is pretty great?”

Steve snorted.

Sam grinned. “Look, they’ve decided they’re gonna give this thing a shot,” he said. “And trust me, a lot of the time, when people do that, they want everyone else to be happy the way they are. I have had the brand-new girlfriends of buddies do this to me more than once. More than one girlfriend has done this to _my_ buddies. And, you know, if you were havin’ that terrible a time you just wouldn’t go to the things, would you?”

This was not inaccurate. Steve’s face probably showed this.

Sam said, “Don’t do it if you genuinely don’t want. But if you’re just diggin’ your heels in – man, that’s a waste. You might meet someone. You might just have a lot of fun. You know?”

Steve said, “Yeah, I know.”

But the thing he couldn’t admit to Sam – the thing he was only just beginning to admit to himself – was that he had a good time at these events mostly because Bucky and Natasha were there too.

“You’re the worst,” he told himself firmly after the third time he caught himself doodling Natasha’s face in his journal, the lines of Bucky’s hands decorating the opposite page. He crossed both out with a vengeance. “You’re pathetic. It’s time to pull yourself together, Rogers.”

He wasn’t hopelessly pining for them, sighing over their smiles and longing for their presence when they were apart. (Much.) He was just… ah, maybe Sam was right; maybe he was lonely after all. Maybe what he really wanted was what Bucky and Natasha had developed between them over these last months: the trust, the teasing, the easy way they walked into each other’s personal space, the palpable affection between them even when they were on opposite sides of a room.

Maybe he should try. It couldn’t hurt, could it?

*********

Melissa Gregory was charming and smart; she and Steve hid behind a potted plant for three hours during Pepper’s next gala and argued about Jackson Pollack, but she had told him herself that she wasn’t looking for anything serious; she had too much going on in her life. Steve liked her a lot, but he wasn’t looking for anything casual; if he was going to do this thing, he might as well do it right. He wasn’t dumb enough to want promise rings on the first date, but he wanted… possibilities.

*********

Hill’s new PA Diane Maupin was also charming, but she had an unfortunate belief that Rembrandt was a hotel in Philadelphia and had never realised Paris was a person before. Steve didn’t think he was a snob, but –

“Oh, wait! You’re right, there was a Brad Pitt movie.”

Steve thought of the three different translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey he had on his bookshelves at home and thought, _nope_.

*********

Agent Thirteen was Peggy’s _niece_.

Steve escaped to the bathroom and rang Natasha.

“Nat, leave a message,” her voicemail said crisply.

“I am gonna _murder_ you,” Steve snarled, and hung up.

*********

Nearly two years later, Steve was still not ready for Lillian with the lip piercing.

*********

Guy Chesterton was funny and handsome, but he was a Yankees fan.

Natasha, clearly confused, poor girl, said, “So?”

Bucky said, “Pal, I am so sorry.”

*********

Cecilia Carmichael was an architect; everything was going fine until Steve’s outraged sense of aesthetics about Stark Tower got the better of him, and then it turned out she had designed it.

*********

He and Amelia Flaherty made it through three whole dates. On the third date, he walked her up to her front door instead of just seeing her into a cab. She was blonde and lovely, a year or two older than him, a social worker friend of Sam’s who was kind-faced and always smiling. Steve liked that in a person – the ability, or the choice, to keep smiling, always, with grace and generosity.

She said, “I’ve had a lovely evening.”

“So have I.” It was entirely true. Her hand touched his lapel; brushed against his chest. She reached up on tiptoes.

A little awkwardly, Steve leaned down. Warmth, softness, a little wet, lingering taste of the coffee they had drunk after dinner. It was… interesting.

They pulled back.

Amelia pursed her lips. Steve smiled at her awkwardly.

“Not really sparking, is it,” she said.

“Ah.” He pulled his shoulders in a little, shuffled a bit, trying not to be rude and show his relief.

“I did have a lovely time, though,” she said.

“Oh, so did I. Really. Uh, maybe we could – just, you know, get lunch?”

Amelia smiled delightedly. “Yes! Let’s. And I will text you that information about the day at the office, for the kids.”

“I will be there,” Steve promised.

So that was that.

*********

Peggy’s mouth under his had lit fireworks behind his eyes and made his knees go weak. He could still smell her perfume, sometimes – some dizzying lavender scent. Natasha always wore roses when she went out. It clung to her, a rich warm musk, and lingered in their bathroom after she had showered, blossoming out into the corridor, the living room. Bucky cycled through aftershaves, trying them out and then abandoning them, much the way, Steve thought, that Natasha could try on personalities and aliases. It was disorienting sometimes; Bucky rarely smelled the way Steve remembered him smelling when they were kids anymore. But he always smelled good.

*********

After nearly four years of living in the future, Steve had learned to recognise the look of a 20th century historian on the hunt for a new book. He sidestepped Dale Brenner’s questions with practiced ease and turned the conversation to the Cuban missile crisis instead, which Dale was only too happy to explain to him.

In detail.

Extensive, minute detail.

*********

“Oh, I volunteer too, down at the Republican campaign headquarters,” said Luke Cooper cheerfully. “It’s not ideal – those Bible-belt nutjobs are dragging the party down, you know, but I’m sure you agree that –“

“I voted for FDR,” said Steve, and didn’t even notice he had put on his repressive _Captain America disapproves of you-_ face.

Cooper blinked, but rallied bravely. “Oh, I –“

“Twice.”

“… right.”

*********

Finally:

“OK,” said Steve at breakfast. “OK, enough. It’s been weeks, I have been trying really hard, and I know you two think you’re the subtlest spies ever, but you’re not, and it’s not working, so – just – _enough_.”

Bucky and Natasha looked at each other.

“OK,” said Natasha.

“Whatever you want,” said Bucky gently.

Steve had a list of things he wanted – strength and trust and courage and hilarity, wordless understanding, patience with his foibles, his hang-ups, his inexperience, someone who wanted him for him, not for the body he’d been given, someone who would understand his inability to back down from a fight, his need to help others, his determination to wipe HYDRA off the face of the planet – but that was kind of a long and probably demanding list for _anyone_ to live up to.

“You’ll come to the gala on Friday, though?” said Natasha.

“Course. I mean, I already promised Pepper.”

She smiled at him.

*********

“I guess we’ve been going about this the wrong way,” said Natasha.

“I told you,” said James. He shifted underneath her a little and stroked his fingers down her back a ways. “I’ve been tryin’ to set him up since 1935.”

She laughed. “But we’re – it doesn’t make sense. There is _literally no one in the world_ who knows him better than we do, why can’t we find him someone? He deserves to be happy, you know?”

“At least as happy as you make me.”

“Oh God, alert, alert, emotions.”

He laughed at her. “Scared?”

“No,” Natasha said promptly, and revelled in the truth of it. She had not been in love with the Winter Soldier – had barely known how to accept and give simple human affection, friendship – but Bucky Barnes was a cat of another colour entirely, and a few months in his company had convinced her she wanted him. Another few months had convinced her she might even want… more. After that, it had just been a matter of persuading him that they were not the half-formed human weapons they had been in the Nineties, and furthermore she had absolutely no objections whatsoever to the way he occasionally looked at her now and would in fact appreciate it very much if he did it a bit more often, so. Get with the programme, soldier. She was sure he had been smarter than this in the Forties.

James pulled her up a little way and kissed her; she tangled their legs together, smiling.

“Seriously though,” she said. “I mean, about Steve.”

“I know,” he said. “I worry about him too. Peggy’s gone now, and…” He sighed. Peggy Carter’s funeral had indeed been awful on all counts. James had still been… unsure of himself, and Steve had tried to refuse their company, but Natasha had overridden him, and the four of them had sat quietly in the back of the church as the service droned on, Steve’s face white and hard as if carved out of marble; the same stiff look he had constantly borne before the Battle of New York. Afterwards he had locked himself into his bedroom and not come out for nearly twenty-four hours. If he had cried, Natasha hadn’t heard it. She and Sam and James had been helpless to do anything other than wait him out.

“And he deserves to be happy,” she repeated quietly, because it was true: Steve, who never wanted anything but the best for people, who believed in you when you didn’t deserve it, who fought on when there wasn’t any hope of winning, who had never had a mean or ungenerous thought in his life – a sharp tongue sometimes, yes, but that wasn’t the same thing. Steve who was brave and selfless and reckless and clever. He deserved someone who would be a comfort for him, a home. Someone who would understand him and stand by him and help him, someone who had his back through thick and thin.

She dropped her face into James’ shoulder and pressed close when he put both arms around her.

*********

Bucky, for his part, felt the same way. Carter had been good for and to Steve; all the Commandos had adored her, but Bucky had been especially grateful to her for Steve’s sake. People interested Steve, he liked them, but they made him defensive as well, always half-expecting a blow, like a kid who’d been hit too many times… which, of course, was what he was. Peggy had… she had not made him more confident; Steve had always been confident, or at least pretended. But Bucky thought that she had shown him that Bucky was not the only person in the world who saw Steve’s worth, and he had needed that sorely.

He needed someone now, someone to stand by him – a partnership. Maybe Bucky was projecting, but everyone needed that, at least a little.

Sam said, “I think you’re projecting.”

Bucky said, “Yeah?”

“He’s got friends, you know, we all love him.”

“I know that,” said Bucky. “It’s not the same.”

“That’s not a decision you get to make for him,” said Sam.

“Is that what you think we’re doing?” Bucky was curious.

“Kind of, yeah. The man says he’s happy. Let him be happy.”

“He’s not happy. I know Steve from happy. He gets this look…” He waved the cigarette in a wide circle, encompassing the roof of Sam’s apartment building, the Harlem neighbourhood laid out around them. “He gets this look.”

He did. It was distant and grieved and weirdly longing all at once, not the thousand-yard-stare Bucky had seen on hundreds of soldiers’ faces, far more revealing than that blank expression. Steve would put down whatever it was he was doing for a moment, and gaze into nothingness, and then force himself back with a shake of his head and a firm pinch of his mouth. Every single time, Bucky wanted to go over there and wipe that look off Steve’s face by any means necessary. Seventy years ago he would have gone over there, flung a blanket around Steve’s shoulders, teased him and taken him out to distract him. Now…

Steve had never demanded anything of Bucky, except that he stay safe and stay alive. He had offered, instead: offered friendship, trust, safety. It had been Bucky who had accepted the offer, chosen to stay, chosen to rebuild what he could of the man he had lost, the man he was supposed to be. And despite this, Bucky felt, in some twisted way, that he had lost the right to be that person for Steve, the one who reached out to him and held him when he needed it. Too much had happened; too much had been lost; but damn if Bucky Barnes didn’t want it all back. All, and more.

Sam’s own look grew shrewd. “Hmm,” was all he said.

*********

Before they made it to Pepper’s gala there was a mission and it was _awesome_. They moved in perfect sync, the three of them, working around and with each other with intimate and practiced ease; it was an easy in-out job, little to no resistance, just enough to put grins of exhilaration on their faces, the satisfaction of a job well-done, and they laughed together on the way back, constantly touching as they moved back out, and Steve’s face was more relaxed than Bucky had seen it in several weeks.

Maybe that was why the gala went so well. Half an hour in, Steve was still relaxed and laughing. Well, they all were; Bucky and Natasha spinning across the dance floor, Steve deep in conversation at the bar with a woman in a green dress who was laughing at his jokes and smiling – smiling besottedly, and Steve was clearly into her, leaning down and in, body language all open and interested, the way he was at home, with Bucky and Natasha –

“Success?” said Natasha.

“Yeah, I think so,” said Bucky, distracted by the strange way his stomach was squirming.

“Hmm,” said Natasha. She bit her lip and looked as distracted as he was. They were super-assassins, so they didn’t step on each other’s feet or bump into any other dancers, but it was a close thing.

Later on, Sam and his date joined them at the table they had commandeered.

“Hey,” he said cheerfully. “Guys, this is Leila Taylor – Leila, Natasha and Bucky.”

“Lovely to meet you,” said Leila, smiling brightly. She was gorgeous, very taken with Sam, clever but not dangerous. “I’ve heard a lot about you from Sam – is Steve here too? I’d like to get to know you all.”

“Sure,” said Natasha. “I mean, we’d like that too. Steve’s, uh, we kinda lost him, actually.”

“He’ll turn up,” said Bucky. “There will be something wrong with the brunette, you’ll see.”

“She’ll be colourblind,” said Natasha dryly. “Or not be able to tell the difference between Renaissance and Baroque. Or think Ypres is in France.”

Bucky snorted.

“Is he interviewing her for a job?” asked Leila, laughing.

“You’d think,” said Bucky. “Nah, we’re tryin’a set him up.”

Leila blinked. “Oh! I thought – uh. Um. You know what, never mind. It’s Sam’s fault.”

“What did I do?” Sam asked innocently.

“Nothing,” said Leila. She was blushing a little, though.

Steve didn’t turn up; Natasha got a text from him during the cab ride home – _taking Venetia home S_ – and announced her intention to write back with a demand to know when he would be home.

“He’s a big boy,” said Bucky sourly.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Natasha, sounding just as sour as he did.

*********

By mid-morning the following day, Steve still wasn’t back.

“He stayed over,” said Natasha, staring at his neatly made bed. “I don’t believe it.”

“Neither do I,” said James, slipping past her.

“Hey! What’re you doing?”

“Snooping,” he said unrepentantly. “Come on, don’t pull faces.”

“It’s a violation of his privacy.” Pompously.

“Yeah, well, I wanna know what makes this brunette so freaking different from all the other brunettes we’ve thrown at him,” said James irritably. “We put _effort_ into that, and she just wanders in off the street and catches his attention? I don’t think so. Somethin’s –“ he lifted up the journal on Steve’s bedside table, aiming for the laptop it was lying on top of, but the book fell open when he put it on the bed, and in spite of themselves they both took a look. The last entry was from a couple months back, around the time Steve had agreed to actually try dating. Natasha’s face, sketched in and then crossed out; James’ hands opening a beer bottle, detailed but also crossed out. Underneath, the last line in heavy black ink: _what the hell. It can’t hurt to try_. And then, undated but in a different ink, so probably some time later: _of all the bad ideas I’ve ever had_ …

The journals – all pieces of paper that Steve got his hands on – were littered with doodles: faces, buildings, landscapes, plates of food, drawings of guns, little comic strips of funny things that had happened to them. It didn’t mean anything.

“He went home with that little skank and she knows nothing about him,” said Natasha viciously. “Not how he likes his eggs or the face he makes when he’s tired or what books he likes or the sixteen hundred different variations on _I’m fine_ that all mean he isn’t –“

She broke off. James closed the journal slowly and put it back where they had found it. “He’s never done this before,” he said. “Never. And I don’t mean just go home with a dame, he’d walk any woman at a party home who asked him to – he’s never had – casual stuff. He just doesn’t work that way.”

“He’s never had sex,” Natasha said.

“I don’t think he has.”

“That is _not_ the way you wanna lose your virginity.” Not the way Steve did, anyway, sweet, earnest, loving Steve. He wouldn’t be comfortable with it; he was too private, too wary, too hurt.

“No, you wanna do that with someone who _loves_ you, someone who _knows_ you inside out, who _cares_ about you –“

James broke off too.

Natasha said, “Are we really worried or are we really jealous?”

James didn’t hesitate. “Really jealous,” he said. “And really, really stupid.”

She tried to laugh – she really did – but it came out closer to a sob. “We have to fix this,” she said. “We have to fix this _right now_.”

*********

Sam had picked up on the first ring, listened carefully to Natasha’s concerns, said, “Are you sure?” accepted it when she had said she was, and met them at Stark Tower to go over the security videos.

James had called Steve’s cell twice and got no answer.

*********

The hell of it was, this was all intimately, completely familiar to Bucky Barnes: scrambling to re-trace Steve’s last steps in order to pull him out of trouble had been a regular night’s entertainment since they were children. Steve went off and got into trouble and never, ever expected Bucky to pull him out of it, even though Bucky always did, and then Steve went off and did it all over again, and goddammit the man was infuriating.

He wondered, as Jarvis and Stark hacked into security databases and called up old SHIELD files on ‘Venetia Sarkissian’, a.k.a the Viper, a.k.a. ‘Madame Hydra’ (seriously, who called themselves that?), when the love and exasperation and affection underlying his actions and attitude towards Steve had begun to change. It had hit him like a freight train in Steve’s bedroom earlier, much as it had hit him that he loved Natasha _that_ way. Maybe the Winter Soldier had done it, in a way; re-learning Steve, re-building their friendship with only flashes of memory, not-quite-real and wholly unclear, to guide him… approaching him as if he were an entirely new person; which, of course, he had been, to the man Bucky had been last year.

Was he different enough from 26-year-old Bucky Barnes that Steve might love him back? If he was, he might yet have something to thank Zola for. Of course, he already had Natasha… two things, then, in spite of everything. Maybe the universe was feeling guilty, and had decided to cut him a break.

Natasha’s hand crept into his.

“We’ll find him,” he said.

She said, “Yes.”

Beside them, Sam said, “He’s been stupid in love with you two for months.”

They both looked at him. The knot of fear in Bucky’s chest loosened, a little.

Sam shrugged. “Not sure he’s noticed yet himself,” he added.

Bucky thought of those looks Steve got; of the doodles, crossed out… “He’s noticed,” he said.

Natasha said flatly, “He’s ours.”

Sam said, “We’ll get him back.”

*********

Steve had absolutely been taken with Venetia Sarkissian. It had helped considerably that the first thing she had said to him was, “Captain Rogers? Major Sarkissian, US Army. Can I say, it’s an honour.”

She was wearing the most gorgeous green dress, all curves and draped fabric, her muscled arms bare, and the left one was scarred with a knife-wound.

“Ma’am,” Steve had said, a little giddy, still, from leftover adrenaline after the mission earlier, and she had shaken her head and said, “You know what, Venetia.”

“Steve,” he’d said. “Get you a drink?”

“Love one.”

Secret agents were impossible to talk to; even when they weren’t in the field they had learned early on to talk in circles, figure-eights, ellipses. Civilians _could_ be impossible to talk to; there were pitfalls in those conversations that hurt you and confused them (or the other way around).

Soldiers… were soldiers, even seventy years later, and Venetia told him about campaigns in Afghanistan and training exercises in the Rockies that were more dangerous than actual missions, goddammit, and Steve talked about shitty rations and knee-high mud, and she teased him when he said he didn’t scar – how else do you keep track of your missions?

“I manage,” he’d said, smiling.

Venetia had taken a long, slow sip of her drink and begun to smile back, dark eyes roaming over his face, and when she had suggested that he walk her home he had not stopped to think twice about it. Just once – just once he was going to do something unplanned, something that made him feel good. He texted Nat briefly, and then made himself forget both her and Bucky for the duration. Venetia lived near Columbus Circle, she said, and they walked up from Fifth Avenue together, along the length of Central Park, laughing about drill sergeants and dissing the Air Force, for which Sam would skin him alive if he ever found out. It was a warm, friendly, welcoming night.

At the door to her apartment building, Venetia said, “Well.”

“Yeah.”

“Did I give you my number?”

“Actually, you did.”

“Go me.”

“I… intend to call it.” A little breathlessly. She was very, very close to him.

“I hope you do.”

She wasn’t that much shorter than him. Slow lean in, eyes on her lovely mouth; then she caught at his jacket and tugged him closer, and they were kissing. Steve’s hands wavered; then settled on her hips. She purred happily into his mouth and put her other hand over his shoulder.

Then there was a sharp pain in the side of his neck. Steve yanked back, staggered – “What?”

“Good night, Captain,” said Venetia calmly.

Black.

*********

When he woke up, his arms were stretched above his head. It was the first thing he noticed; they had clearly been pinned there for a while, and were starting to ache.

That meant they had been pinned there for a long while. Steve shook his head, trying to clear the muzziness, bumped it against the surface he was lying on – steel. Body-warmed underneath him, it made a slightly hollow noise when he hit his head. His hands – his hands were encased in something like the restraints HYDRA had put him in in DC, a heavy block of metal. He strained his neck to try and see them better, but – well.

Great, just great. Was he – he was shirtless. His legs – his ankles were pinned down as well. Better and better. He twisted his body, tried to rear up, cried out hoarsely. There was another restraint stretched across his bare chest, a curve of heavy iron that dug into his chest when he leaned up and rubbed his nipples raw, an extra little zing of humiliation. But the sharp pain in his side… he tried twisting, tried to see, and nearly passed out again when he managed it. There was a _tube_ lodged in his skin, taped inside him, and his blood was dripping, slowly but steadily, into a container on the floor.

“Pretty, isn’t it,” said Venetia dryly. “Would’ve been easier to draw it from the veins in your arms, but the general consensus was that this would be the easiest way to restrain you. Awkward, but hell. And we don’t want you dead yet. You replenish your blood extremely quickly, you know. Nearly woke up about three times while we were transporting you. The amount of drugs we’ve given you should have killed you about four times over. Fascinating.”

Steve licked his lips with a dry tongue, tried to work moisture into his mouth. “What – who?”

“Who should be obvious,” she said, grinning, and of course it was. “As for what…” she shrugged. “You’re a smart man, Steve. You showed that last night.” The smile she gave him was the smile that had attracted him to her in the first place, tilted now with cruelty. “Poor boy. And you a national icon. You know, I had all these scenarios, I had your morning run mapped out, I know the bakery where you buy your bread, I have profiles on all your neighbours. And then it turns out that the one thing that Captain America wants is a _date_. Well, _sure_ , sweetheart. The weirdest thing was trying to figure out what you like.” She had been moving around the room as she spoke, her voice floating over to him from beyond his field of vision as she fiddled with dials, at one point typed a few words into a computer, the keyboard clattering loudly. Now she came back over to him and sat on the edge of the lab table he was lying on, at a level with his hips.

“I had a whole row of agents lined up, too short, too tall, too blonde, whatever. And then of course it occurred to me – so _obvious_ – Director Carter. Dark, snappy, above all, a soldier. Right? An equal. Right.” She nodded judiciously.

“Clever,” Steve rasped. She smiled at him again, leaned in and offered him a sip of water from a bottle she produced from somewhere – why not, he wasn’t going anywhere. He gulped greedily, and it slid down his chin and jaw and pooled in the hollow beneath his throat. Venetia dipped a finger there and drew it down his breastbone to the metal restraint across his chest. She tapped her nail against his skin.

“Hmm?”

“Get off me.”

She laughed. “Yeah, yeah. We’ll see. You know, in all the best superhero movies, this is the point where I put on my sexiest face and give you the recruitment speech, but I… don’t think you’re gonna listen. Any chance I’m wrong?”

“Snowball’s in hell,” he said.

“Alas,” she said. “A genuine waste of human – _Aryan_ – perfection.” The finger moved, trailed over the metal restraint, landed back on his skin. Steve shuddered in spite of himself. It traced around the wound in his side, and then went lower. Hip; line of his uniform trousers, still snugly on. Then she reached between his legs and cupped him.

“ _What_!” He twisted involuntarily, stomach turning over, but he was pinned to the lab table; there was no way to avoid the touch.

“For God’s sake,” she said briskly. “I want your genetic material, handsome, what do you think I’m doing? When was the last time a woman put her hands in your pants, the Forties?” She unsnapped his pants and reached for the zipper.

“And the sexual assault is just a nice little bonus,” said Steve. “ _Get off me_.”

“Well, I admit I probably could have kept you unconscious while I did this,” she said cheerfully, hand hovering above his groin. “Come on. You woulda climbed into bed with me twelve hours ago.”

Twelve hours. He’d been gone for twelve hours. Bucky and Natasha – they would come looking for him, they knew he wouldn’t be comfortable sleeping with her on a first date…

“Oh, the calculating look,” she said. “I’m sorry. I have your phone right here. If Mom and Dad call again, well – yes, who is this exactly? Oh, the, uh, the _roommates_. I’m so sorry, Steve’s just in the shower. I’ll give him a message? Sure. You have a lovely day, now. Mmmmmm.” Delighted, satisfied little hum.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with casual sex, but I’m not really all that into it,” said Steve. “Twelve hours. They’ll know.”

She tapped her fingers on his abs, and then dug the nails in. He flinched, grimaced in pain when blood welled up in five small crescents. What did the woman do to her fingernails?

“We’ll see,” she said. “Your friends …”

“Bucky Barnes and Natasha Romanov.”

She pursed her lips again, but there was no smug undertone this time. “The Widow.”

“And the Winter Soldier.”

Longer silence. Then she said, “Hmm. Well, it’s useful intel.” She got to her feet; she was wearing a jumpsuit much like Natasha’s old SHIELD outfits. “Wait there for me, darling.” Blew him a kiss and left, clanging the door shut behind her.

It was a basement, it was a lab. There were computers, monitors, a fridge, another lab table. The concrete ceiling was laced with pipes and cables, the bulb to the left of him was uncovered and blinding.

“Well,” said Steve. “This is a first.” He peered down his chest at the bloody marks on his abs, his unsnapped trousers. “In more ways than one.” Genetic material. He shuddered. Then he told himself firmly, “Rogers, you are _never dating again_.”

All right. He wasn’t going to get his hands free in a hurry, but maybe he could get his ankles loose. He started to twist, tried to pull at the restraints there, but it was no use; all he was doing was wearing through his pants leg and probably laying his own skin open. And every movement rubbed the iron band across his chest more abrasively than before.

“Hell, hell, hell,” he chanted under his breath. His hands were trapped; he couldn’t even move his fingers. He pulled on his arms, trying to get them down from over his head, but he strained and groaned and watched the veins stand out against his forearms and _nothing_. Steve collapsed, panting; closed his eyes. Damn. Fuck and hell and damn.

Bucky and Natasha would find him. They had _better_ damn well find him. He would haunt them if they didn’t, he swore to God, they would regret every single second they had ever spent trying to get him to hook up with someone, they were the honest-to-God worst friends he had ever had, why did he bother. And Sam! _Sex is pretty great_ , Steve’s genetically-enhanced ass. “No orgasm is worth this,” he muttered. “No _relationship_ is worth this.”

Except, of course, that it would be – if it was with the right person. (People.) Somewhere up there, he could picture Peggy laughing herself stupid at his current predicament. _I told you you don’t know a damn thing about women_ , she would say, and cackle.

A soldier, Venetia had said; an equal. She hadn’t been wrong. Was he so easy to see through? And if so, why hadn’t Bucky and Natasha, who knew him best, managed to do so?

Maybe, subconsciously, they hadn’t liked the idea of Steve meeting anyone who might genuinely take their place in his life. Maybe they just didn’t know him as well as he wished they did. He thunked his head against the lab table and groaned.

“Feeling sore?” Venetia was back.

“Fuck off,” said Steve: the first time he had ever sworn at a woman in his life.

“Poor wee bairn.”

“So who’s Major Sarkissian?” he asked suddenly.

She looked surprised. “Hmm? Oh, a fake. Don’t worry, I haven’t been making free with the identity of a US Army officer.”

“Lovely,” said Steve. Keep her off-balance, keep her talking… “In that case – given that you’re about to steal my genetic material – what’s your name?”

“Oh, sweetheart.” She shrugged. “I don’t have a name. Or I have dozens. Whichever you prefer.”

“That’s – sad.”

She stared at him. “Really? Now? Really?”

“I’m trying really hard to distract you from the sexual assault part of the evening,” he said. “Day. Whichever.”

“Maybe I should gag you.”

“You could knock me out again, I’d rather not remember it.”

Venetia bared her teeth at him and took a few steps closer to him, and then something upstairs exploded with vehement prejudice. She spun around; the whole building shook, and dust drifted down from the ceiling. Gunshots; people shouting; running footsteps. She turned to look at him, dropped her eyes to the container of blood on the floor, and lunged for it, but there was another explosion – a grenade, out in the corridor, much closer than the first, and the container wasn’t small or manageable; Steve got her fist in his face instead and then she was gone, cursing. Gunshots. More yelling. Someone came into the basement: heavy, steady footsteps. Bucky’s face loomed over Steve’s.

“I don’t wanna hear a word about it,” said Steve, trying desperately for funny.

Bucky looked at him: the restraints, the container of blood, the marks of her fingernails on his abs, the unsnapped pants. Steve felt himself go red. Bucky went white instead: white with anger. He freed Steve from the restrains with harsh, jerky movements, not speaking. Steve groaned when his hands were finally free and he could drop his arms to his sides once more. Then he groaned again when the bar came away from his chest; the skin was red and angry and he had never been so aware of the fact that he even had nipples. His ankles were bleeding where he had tried to break the restraints open.

Suddenly, small cool hands on his chest, near the wound and the tube; Natasha’s hair tickled his ribs as she bent over him.

“OK,” she said. “Get Sam to take this out. Steve, are you OK?”

“Yes,” he said, and then he said, “No,” and after that he added, “I’m never dating again.”

For the first time, Bucky spoke. “No, you’re not,” he said in tones of great finality, but Steve didn’t get a chance to ask him what he meant before Sam was there, prying tape off his skin and snapping orders about bandages and needle and thread.

*********

By that evening, the lingering fuzzy-headedness from the drugs had gone, and the wound in his side was almost closed up – it hadn’t been very big, after all – and the marks of Venetia’s fingernails had gone entirely. Steve was fine. He _was_.

“Shut up and do as you’re told,” Bucky said. He was waving a bowl of pasta at him threateningly.

“It’s not that I’m not hungry,” said Steve. “It’s just that I don’t need to eat in bed. I can get up.”

“Humour us,” said Natasha, wandering in with her own bowl of food and perching on the end of Steve’s bed.

Steve submitted with barely-concealed bad grace. “Fine.”

“ _Thank_ you,” said Bucky, and sat down on the bed as well. The three of them ate in silence, but Steve couldn’t stop glancing up at Bucky and Nat. They had been watching him all day with strangely intent expressions, and were still doing it now.

“So, uh – how did you –“

Natasha shrugged. “When we saw that you hadn’t come home… And security at the party last night turned up something suspicious about your, uh, date.” Saying the word made her look as if she was sucking on a lemon.

“I knew you’d notice,” said Steve, feeling relieved.

“You coulda not gone off with her in the first place,” said Bucky to his pasta bowl.

Steve stared at him. “Says the man who’s been trying to set me up since we were teenagers?”

“Right!” said Bucky. “With people I know! And have vetted! And background-checked!”

“You background-checked everyone you suggested to me for a date,” said Steve.

“Yes of course we did,” said Natasha.

“And in the course of this extensive operation it never occurred to you to – look, I mean – she figured out pretty quick what kind of person I’m attracted to, you know? But you idiots –“

“You’re right,” said Natasha. “We’re idiots. Very, very big idiots. And we owe you one – or possibly several –“

“Let’s go with several,” said Steve. “I still haven’t forgotten that Sharon is Peggy’s _niece_.”

“You know, I wouldn’t have minded losing to a Carter,” said Bucky, and put the pasta bowl down – first his, and then Steve’s, tugging it and the fork firmly out of his hands. “But some HYDRA nutjob…”

“What,” said Steve.

“Now?” said Natasha.

“Might as well,” said Bucky, and rubbed a thumb along Steve’s jaw. He leaned back, but – well, there wasn’t anywhere to go, except back into the pillows, and – Bucky was touching him. That was – that was not a thing to be turned down. Steve swallowed hard.

“What…?” he said again.

Bucky leaned in and kissed him.

Oh, yes, wow, fireworks: warm and wet, chapped lips, thinner than those of the women Steve had kissed, but oh, yes. And Bucky’s hand slid back into his hair to cup his head and tilt it, a little bit, the way he wanted it, and Steve – made a noise in his throat that – and his hands – Natasha had taken hold of his hands, cradling them in her own, and turned the right one over gently, so gently, and kissed it. Steve shook. Bucky drew back slowly, little, nipping kisses, coming back and drawing away inch by inch; Natasha slid, sinuous, up the bed and took his place, carefully laying Steve’s arms over her hips as she straddled him. Roses, she smelled like roses. He closed his eyes, and opened his mouth under hers, Natasha’s mouth, her hands balanced on his shoulders – Bucky’s hand dropping to his chest, just above the line of abrased skin from the restraint earlier, as if to hold Steve’s heart inside him.

Natasha drew back. Steve breathed hard, shuddered, gulped.

“You – this –“

“No more dates,” said Bucky with a flash of humour.

Natasha rubbed a thumb over Steve’s lips. “What you want,” she said. “As much – or as little – as you want.”

Steve drank her in: glorious red hair, sly green eyes, mouth made for smiling, the perfect line of her nose. He turned his head, and there was Bucky, the same Bucky he’d always known and yet had never seen before: Bucky with smoky blue eyes darkened, short hair teased a little up and over his forehead – Natasha had done that, she thought it looked best like that. Mouth reddened with kissing, same smile he had always had for Steve, if, now, more intimate than before.

“I’m pretty sure Captain America’s not allowed to settle for half-measures,” he said shakily.

“You’re a dork,” said Bucky, and kissed him again. Steve – look – it wasn’t a whimper, OK?

Well, maybe it was. Natasha was _wriggling_ , and –

“Move,” she said imperiously. “My turn. Hah.”

“Both of you, move,” said Bucky, shoving them into the middle of the bed. “There. I tell you what, Steve – it’s a damn shame you’re too big to manhandle now.” Natasha arched, and laughed, and said, “I have missed out,” and her clever hands led Steve’s mouth along her jaw, down her neck to kiss and lick at her skin as Bucky climbed on next to them, and Natasha slid off to the other side of Steve a little, pulling him back up again to her mouth, and then – Bucky slung his leg over Steve’s thigh, and – yeah. Yes. Incongruously, Steve thought of Joyce – _yes, I said yes I will yes_ – and knew – knew if he had been able to untangle his mouth from Natasha’s, catch a breath as Bucky stroked his stomach with slow steady hands – he could have quoted it at them, breathless and flushed, and Bucky would roll his eyes and Natasha would laugh, but they would both recognise it, and him, all the way through.

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
